


Defective

by claireweasley (dul_cin_ea)



Category: 21 Jump Street (TV)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Mean Streets and Pastel Houses, Multi, Unrequited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:40:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22904875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dul_cin_ea/pseuds/claireweasley
Summary: He’s watching Tom’s hands for a lack of anywhere else to look.
Relationships: Tom Hanson/Brian Ganz, Tom Hanson/Doug Penhall
Kudos: 16





	Defective

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was originally posted on livejournal on 17 March 2005, and has been exported from there, so apologies for the (undoubtedly numerous) extremely old errors.

_I was driving the car_

_Oh man. You know, this means I have to arrest you right?_

_I know._

_I’m sorry._

He’s watching Tom’s hands for a lack of anywhere else to look. Hands that are clutched tightly round the polystyrene, vice like grip, knuckles tense white as the coﬀee is getting gradually colder. The night air with it. He knows he should feel something, say anything, react. But it’s not there. His mind is a blank sheet of paper. The words are gone, and trying with any force will only draw attention to the fact that they aren't there.

He’s watching the hands when they move. One hand moving quickly as if to ward oﬀ any last minute indecisiveness, skin slides, warm from the coﬀee, and slightly sweaty over his. The ﬁngers grab him tightly, pressing against his palm as if he’s about to ﬂy away. He smiles halfheartedly. Tom-

Not Tom anymore. It’s Oﬃcer Hanson. Police Oﬃcer Tom Hanson who is going to arrest him, and take him to jail, or if he's really lucky, some far away juvenile delinquent school with a bunch of other troubled kids. The Tom sitting next to him, who just matter-of-factly informed him his life as he knows it is over.

Maybe that’s not altogether a bad thing. What he’s known hasn’t been all that great.

He’s kind of more worried about his mom, and Steve, and Tober, and Spooky and the rest of the boys, what he’s going to say to them.

Maybe Tom could-

But he’s not that Tom anymore, he has to keep reminding himself of that. He’s not Tom who’d stayed at his house. Laughed with him, spoke to him like he believed it when he said he was smart. Acted like maybe he understood him.

This Tom wasn’t the guy who’d kissed him until his lips were numb for the heat, and his stomach was burning, and he could have just about stopped breathing.

This Tom, couldn’t be that Tom, because it would suck too damn much. 

‘Brian, I’m just. I’m sorry’

Now okay, that was Tom. The oh-so polite and repentant. The good guy. Tom who had stopped so abruptly that night, fumbling for the metal clasp on his jeans. As if by him undoing it in the ﬁrst place, that it had switched on some sort of button to reality. He had stumbled backwards apologizing and looking all ﬁdgety and guilty, and leaving him alone, uncomfortable. Kinda cold.

It’s cold tonight, he thinks. Freezing even. Fingers of startling, sparse air press up under his leather jacket and linger there.

His hand isn’t cold under Tom’s grasp, though it isn’t entirely warm either. Bumps form under his skin, beads of heat working their way up into his chest. He looks up at the man attached to the hand, but he’s looking away. His head turned so far sideways it’s unnatural, and uncomfortable to look at.

A burst of air escapes from his lungs that sounds like something between nervous laughter and choking. It makes Tom turn back, but he doesn’t say anything. He looks suddenly very much like the old Tom again, and Brian kinda wishes that would stop.

Not your friend. Not anything else.

‘Time for the handcuﬀs already is it?’ The lame joke falls out of his lips before he can stop himself. Then embarrassed, and it’s him turning away and grating his teeth and oh god, please don’t let that be water in his eyes.

Tom stands and drops his hand. ‘No cuﬀs,’ he says simply

He nods, sliding oﬀ the chair and spilling the remainder of his own coﬀee across his hand and wrist. It must be the cold air, but it feels hotter than it should and the heat stays, stinging like a newly placed brand as he follows Tom to the car.

He hadn’t known why he’d stopped so abruptly that night. He still doesn’t know, and he thinks he’d like to. He supposes it must be something to do with being a kid, or being a punk, or being a homo, or all of those things. But the way he’d touched him. That’d kind felt like, well, like something. He entertains the idea of asking Tom about it now. Just to see what he’d say. But that would leave him open to questions he couldn’t properly answer anyway. Not at least without sounding like some David Bowie ballad.

Forget Lancer, forget any of that, I look at you, and I want to be something better. 

Yeah, he thinks that would go down just swell.

So he just gives into the easier, placating silence. Sinks into the leather seat, as the car rumbles underneath him, and watches the lights as they reﬂect in and out of the windows and leave bright shining spots in his eyelids. There’s a quietness in the monotony, and he thinks maybe if he could stay here for a bit, he would.

He is jerked out of his half-stupor by the forward pull of the car when it slides into the park. He lifts his head and yawns in a way that might almost be casual if it wasn't for the slight shake in every one of his muscles. But he can handle it. He has to face up to what he’s done, be the good guy for once. Like his Dad might have been, if the circumstances had been diﬀerent. Brian’s hand goes for the door handle when he realises Tom isn’t moving. His hands are gripping the steering wheel and he’s staring intently out the front window.

‘Tom?’ His voice is quieter than he thought it would be.

‘I didn’t sign up for this’ the other man mutters still looking forward, anger bubbling over ‘Locking up kids who have made some big mistakes, this isn’t honorable work. You’re not a criminal!’ The way Tom says it makes it seem like he’s addressing himself more than anything else, and he thinks, maybe he’s not aware he’s speaking out loud.

Brian opens his mouth to reply, but can’t. It so quiet now he can hear his careful breathing against the plink-plink of the cooling engine. He tries to think of something to say, and only succeeds in sliding sideways, noisily and awkwardly on the leather seats. If Tom notices it doesn’t matter because there’s a thud and a crack and it’s Tom’s ﬁst that just hit the window, and yeah, okay now he’s really damn nervous.

‘Geez, you could’ve been me, man’

‘With those plaid pants?’ Brian replies, voice suddenly presenting itself. ‘I don‘t think so’

That makes Tom’s mouth snap shut. He stills, and turns to face him again, a dazed, wide grin creeping outward across his face. He chuckles, clunky and high-pitched, and reaches out at his hand again before reconsidering and pulling back, ﬁngers curling a little.

Brian is thinking about those hands again when he notices the ﬂicker of movement outside ‘Hey, isn’t that your step-brother?’

Tom turns, and opens the car door to greet Doug, letting cold air in. When he speaks it is like an afterthought.

‘…not my step-brother.’

Well, yeah, of course. That made sense. He’d always thought looked nothing alike, and who’d ever heard of two cops being step-brothers and work partners anyway? Brian rolls out of the car and his mouth quirks as Doug starts hollering about what it is Tom’s gone and done to his hand and how it’s practically criminal to break windows on a car like that.

He can see why he so easily believed they were brothers now. It not just the way that they talk to each other, it’s the way that they respond to each other. Intrinsic. Like two parts of one act. The way they mirror each other while being so completely diﬀerent. Brian is suddenly thinking of the night when Tom had freaked at Steve, and he’d watched the way Doug had moved to protect him. How they’d protected each other. The way they only had to exchange glan-

_Oh._

The tired, frustrated look Doug had given him the day after Tom had crashed at his house.

_Oh._

Tom squeezes Doug’s shoulder, teasing, and tells him to take a chill pill.

Something heavy hits Brian’s chest and the back of his knees. It doesn’t make him fall to the ground, but he does feel that his mind has ﬁnally had someone draw in it with ﬂuorescent markers, and he wants to shut it oﬀ immediately.

Cold air is making his lungs burn. Someone, he’s not sure who, says they ought to go inside and he can feel himself focusing intently on the chew of his boots on the snow littered gravel.

Tom talks about paperwork before leaving him in the foyer.

He sits for a long time on a wooden bench, knees pulled awkwardly up to his chest, resting his forehead on his knees so that he can see the ﬂoor through the split in his thighs and thinks about as little as he possibly can.

He wakes later to tired knee caps, and saliva on his chin, but too tired too care for much of anything, which is a deﬁnite improvement. Someone is prodding him tentatively near his ear. He opens an eye to see Doug Penhall waving a cup of coﬀee under his nose. He accepts it gratefully, the polystyrene warming his ﬁngers in aﬀectionate greeting.

‘Good coﬀee,’ he remarks casually.

‘I‘m rather attached to it,’ Doug replies, swilling.


End file.
